Three UM researchers named 2011 MacArthur Fellows

Three UM researchers — a historian, a chemist and a stem cell biologist — are among the 22 new MacArthur Fellows announced today by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Each will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years from the MacArthur Foundation.

This year’s U-M winners are:

• Tiya Miles, director of the Department of Afroamerican & African Studies, LSA. Miles is a public historian who is reframing and reinterpreting the history of our diverse nation in works that illuminate the complex interrelationships between the African and Cherokee peoples in colonial America.

• Melanie Sanford, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry, LSA. Sanford is an organometallic chemist reigniting research on an important chemical pathway and developing a method to enable modification of complex molecules with important products we use every day.

• Yukiko Yamashita, research assistant professor, U-M Life Sciences Institute; and assistant professor of cell and developmental biology, Medical School. The stem cell biologist is elucidating the process of stem cell division and its role in age-related decline in organ repair and in the onset of some cancers and other proliferative disorders.